When April Died
by teh liz
Summary: [rent 100] You rarely remember the faults of a recently deceased person.


**Prompt:** 024. Family  
**Author's Notes:** If you think I own Rent, you need more help than I do. My progress chart is here. I had this idea, and it doesn't feature April per se, but I had to write it. Hope it counts. Consider it a labor of love if it doesn't. :

When April died, her mother cried. She flipped through photo albums and looked at the pictures of her daughter growing up. She laughed when the spirit took her, but mostly she cried. Cried at the five-year-old April who stared back at her with a brilliant smile over the top of a birthday cake with Sesame Street characters she hardly remembered the name of now. She laughed at eleven-year-old April, who refused to smile with braces on her teeth and stared up at the camera petulantly instead. Her heart hurt as she flipped past pictures of her in high school in a marching band uniform, another of her in a long black dress for her junior – no, senior prom, she went to her junior prom in a navy blue dress, and yet another photo of her in the cardinal red cap and gown of a graduated high school senior.

Her heart contracted as she found the most recent photo of her daughter, at least six months old. She'd sent it with a letter, _Just to prove to you that I'm alive, haha,_ she'd started the letter, and gone on to vaguely describe a typical day for her, signing it _Love, A._ She looked at the photograph, April taking the foreground and smiling for the camera with the indication that she would rather rot. For about the first time, she saw the boy in the background of the photo. He had no eye for the camera, or anyone outside of the shot, and looked only at April with such a look of devotion and love it made her heart break.

She hated him.

When April died, her father put up a strong front. He fielded all the phone calls from the family and family friends and acquaintances. Yes, it was terribly tragic, a terrible loss for the world and all and sundry. Her mother's doing fine, thank you, and her brother's being a brave young man. How was he doing? He was managing. In more ways than one. He managed the funeral arrangements, he managed to keep too many people out of the house, and he managed to not break down when he actually realized his baby girl was dead.

His heart was numb when he had to call New York. He wished he'd never heard of the city, never sent April there for school, that she'd never met That Boy. They never used his name, he was always That Boy, and clearly to blame for their treasured April's demise. She was not the sort who would get into drugs and… _anything_ potentially harmful, certainly not on her own. They didn't want him there, and he had to deliver the message.

He had to admit, it was only a small fraction of the hurt he would have liked to return on him.

When April died, her brother was mad. Angry beyond words, so angry he put a hole in his bedroom wall. His hand throbbed from the impact, but it was satisfying, because it meant he was alive and _could_ feel. Right at that second, it felt like he'd cracked a bone. He threw it into the wall, and cried out from the pain, relishing it all the same. He fell to the floor and then sobbed when he realized he could break as many bones as he wanted, none of them were going to bring April back. He wanted nothing more than to see his sister buried and go back to his life. It would be easy enough to pretend that she was still living her separate life in New York – that is, until Christmas came around, or he graduated high school in the spring. Because she wouldn't be there, and would never be there again. She was gone forever.

His heart hurt when he thought about never seeing his sister again, pulling her hair or making fun of her. It hurt when he heard his father call New York and That Boy Who Ruined His Sister's Life. It somehow didn't seem right, because while he'd met the man once, he knew that he had loved April completely, and after all, April had been an adult. She knew how to make her own decisions, it wasn't fair to lay it all on his head. At the same time, he wanted to take the train right down to New York City and throw his throbbing fist into his face. But he knew it wouldn't solve anything.

Nothing would solve this loss except time.


End file.
